Historical undergarments and the hazards of reading historical AUs

[cimorene]

You really should check the names of garments and especially check what kind of underwear people were wearing whenever writing historical fiction, even if you think it's well within the era of modern clothing.

(You could be surprised all the way up to the 1960s! The modern bra - with cups - didn't really come into existence until the 1930s, although brassieres were first sold in the late 1800s; and elasticated fabrics first appeared in the 1930s, but they weren't like modern stretch fabric. Meanwhile, just because a corset was involved doesn't mean the standard pop culture perception of undergarments that went with it is correct. There was a vast difference between the early 17th century and the early 20th century, and the early 1800s were often uncorseted or corseted only minimally. On the other hand, the Victorian era, which may seem the most familiar to many people because of its frequent appearances in pop culture texts, demonstrably involved about twice as many garments and undergarments as many, including those educated by popular movies and television, are aware.)

Anyway, I've just discovered that two errors in historical undergarments is my limit before flinging my phone down in exasperation, and even though in this fanfiction it would be an easy fix, I don't know that I'll be sanguine enough to compose a polite, casual, and friendly comment on the subject any time soon.

Imagine being easily able to imagine how it feels to not care about the minute details of historical costume! I can't. I mean... I've tried. I've gotten as far as logically understanding that people don't, but there's a huge emotional gap. The narrative just won't hold together. It's essentially a complete cipher to me.

Comments

[stultiloquentia]

Hahaha I was just about to comment, "And historical underwear is so much fun to research, why would anyone deny themselves?!" but you're right; I forgot about the menstrual horrors.

[cimorene]

You know, I saw a glancing reference to menstrual arrangements in the pre-industrial period that interested me recently and I meant to do more research about it because - and this is decidedly odd but still sadly predictable - you can do A LOT of reading on women's undergarments without finding a single mention of it.

[phosfate]

I've heard a lot of different stuff, from rags doing the job, to some women being constantly pregnant/nursing that it was rarely an issue, but most of it has been theoretical rather than evidence-based.

[cimorene]

Yeah, that's already a problem with garments that weren't worn by the upper classes and with a lot of undergarments from further back in time. I've also read that just bleeding on your clothes and everything else was done in at least some of Europe at least some of the time, so I guess there's got to be some documentation of that as well.

And of course there were menstrual huts and other forms of isolation to some extent.

But I'm curious about non-Western cultures, particularly the ones where pants for women were widespread - various Eurasian nomadic cultures, I mean. If you're already wearing pants, and also if you're riding horses daily, it seems like the leap to underpants or something of the kind would be more easily made...